Software licensing. As home users, it's already an incomprehensible mess of legalese that nobody cares one bit about. However - we home users have it easy. The situation for business users and people managing IT departments is even worse (proprietary software, mostly, of course). Microsoft is a major culprit in this regard, and while the company acknowledges that the situation is messy, they claim they can't really do anything about it.
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Member since:2005-11-15
That is a pile of crap!
You are saying that all servers should be charged for 1000. How about we do the following. We charge 650 for each, and we get the magic number of 1300.
My point is that Microsoft very well knows what they charge and when. They have the statistics to simplify the cost structure so that it would work.
BUT the problem is that Microsoft wants to make more money. Thus instead of charging 650 they charge 850 and say, "hey look you have a bargain because servers are cheaper." But people look at the bottom line and say, "wait you are charging me more..."
This is the crux of the entire Microsoft price debate. Microsoft wants to charge to the waazoo but is unable to do so and hence by doing "special" clauses they can.
Look at their MSDN subscription pricing. It is absolutely insane, when originally it was about 1000 USD, now that same subscription costs about 3000.
Member since:2005-07-06
In what way is it a pile of crap? An example was asked for and I provided one. Was my example somehow incorrect?
And there will still be someone who has one production server and two failover servers who now has to pay 1950 for what used to cost them 1600. I can't see them being very happy.
Member since:2007-01-18
They could simplify licensing by not having so many different version of the same thing. Let's start with Windows desktop. How about one version. I will concede two, one for home and one for business.
Next we look at the server version. They don't need an Enterprise and Standard version. One version will be fine. Datacenter version I will let slide as a datacenter provides a different function.
Office could be simplified into a standard and pro version.
As for SQL Server. One for business and one for data centers.
The best part is now Microsoft doesn't need to support so many different versions. They save money.
Now we all know that you have full price users and those who qualify for discounts. Bam. Two licensing models. Next you throw in some Quantity discounts and your done. That's pretty simple.
Member since:2006-01-12
And costly for small people. All these changes would mean that cost of cheapest would go up since development costs of those extra features would be added on those. Reason why we have limited versions is because it makes stuff cheaper.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Lots of ways. For example there might be a license that says product X costs $1000 pr server, unless the server is a backup fail over server for a production server, at which point it will only cost you $300. This adds a layer of complexity about exactly what constitutes a fail over server. They could simply remove the clause and say $1000 pr server no matter what, and then the price would go up for a lot of users.
A lot of the complex clauses in MS licencing is about letting you use certain cheaper licenses in certain limited cases. Removing those clauses will lead to a lot of people who are using the cheap licenses in limited ways will now have to pay full price